Thursday, July 23, 2009

revival of a golden age?

this blog is in partial fulfilment of a promise made to someone close to my heart. I had promised that someone a long time back that i wud blog soon after returning from a visit to central UP as a part of my internship, nearly 2 weeks ago. now is that 'soon after'. and this, as that person said, can be attributed to writers' block, being at a loss for words and more importantly, sheer laziness. those who know me, will understand.

it is, i think, a revival of the golden age for malayalam movies. the last few months, mallu movies i've seen have been remarkably 'not that bad' and some, even good! shaking off its obsession with 'westernized' (read tamil-like or bollywood like) music n romance, and coming back to a brush wid simple realities of life, and actors becoming more like human beings than superheros (leave the actual superstars), malayalam movie scene is breaking out from a jinx. many movies have left a nice feeling these days. i don't remember all of them, but some are arabikkatha, thirakkatha, makante achhan, passenger and even 2 harihar nagar. unlike the situation 2 or 3 years ago, you don't feel sad that you've watched a movie. so much so that passenger reminded me remotedly (I'm not speaking of acting) of Vellanakalude Naadu. blame me for that, if you want to, but i liked that movie. and it is the fact that I watched that movie in a cinema next door to my house. a cinema theatre that shut its shutters down 5-6 years ago after years of showing b-class and soft porn movies. now an AC theatre with DTS. back in action, and that too with good movies.

maybe I'm being overly optimistic. but when a theatre coming out of a shutdown can afford to play movies like passenger, one can be optimistic. maybe something like (i won't say exactly like) the golden age is coming back.